Three chambers was enough. She didn’t force herself to look any farther. She’d worked grisly and premeditated crime scenes in her time, and had believed herself inured to the horror of what one sentient being could do to another, but the clinical, industrialized monstrousness on display here overwhelmed even her iron sensibilities.

She returned to the central platform and looked down at Lantern. “I believe you. About the Axiom.” This wasn’t a Liar facility. No species would build chambers like those she’d just seen to “instruct” their own offspring. A people that universally sadistic would have never survived more than a generation.

“Thank you,” Lantern said. “I am glad. Many of the systems here have failed or been shut down, but thirteen of the incubators are still viable.” Lantern’s artificial voice was matter-of-fact, but her tentacles trembled. Smart of Elena to figure out what that meant.

Lantern punched a button on the panel, and a triple handful of the hundreds of smoked glass panels lit up. Tiny curled creatures no bigger than Callie’s thumbs floated inside the cubes.

“Can we take the incubators out of that wall without hurting them?” Callie said.

“Yes. The tanks are portable. Once we deactivate the stasis field, they can remain disconnected for a few hours. At that point we would need to oxygenate the tanks–”

“We can do that on the White Raven. Let’s get the incubators into the drone.”

They all worked together, and it went fast, in weightlessness. Ashok and Lantern figured out how to disconnect the tubing and seal the incubators for transport, and they carried the little tanks like the precious cargo they were onto the kaiju. Callie used her non-lethal anti-personnel epoxy to stick the incubators to the floor and wall, where they would remain in place until someone yanked them out with deliberate force.

Once they were done, Callie said, “Let’s find the control room and finish this. I don’t want to be here anymore.” Something squeezed Callie’s hand, and she looked down to see Lantern’s tentacle wrapped around her fingers. She squeezed back.

Ashok piloted the kaiju back up to the service tunnels. They traveled in silence, interrupted only by Lantern giving directions in consultation with the glowing sphere. The drone moved swiftly through weightless areas, following bends and twists in the sprawling organic structure, and then Lantern said, “Stop. There’s an entry to the control room. The bio-drone only has to extend its head to make the aperture open.” She looked at Callie. “How would you like to proceed, captain?”

“Do we expect to encounter defenses?”

Lantern shrugged. “The station was on some sort of low-level lockdown when we arrived, cutting off communications from section to section. After Hans and his neural implant went outside, and the alarm sounded, I assume the station is now on even higher alert. The control room would be an obvious place to defend.”